


Dark Star

by Sonntam



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:13:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23299114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonntam/pseuds/Sonntam
Summary: Lady Arisa von Fellengard was born under a dark star. She can feel it watching her, coldly and distantly. Sometimes it beckons her in the dead of night.
Kudos: 2





	Dark Star

The night never scared Arisa like it scared other children. In the dark things were the same as during the day. 

Soft pillows on the high canopy bed. The dolls along the wall holding their watch. Bright tapestries and fur carpets. 

From a young age Arisa understood that the only thing that changed at night were the people. They became tired and fearful. They prowled instead of striding. They distrusted each other, they stole and fought.

She heard of many such stories, but they did not concern her. The night was bright with stars and Arisa heard them sing. She trusted them like she trusted her nanny. They have been with her all her life, even if they hid away in during the day. 

Once when her cousins came to visit she declared herself the queen of stars. Younger cousin Emma asked why not the moon, for is not the moon more important? Older cousin Edward laughed at her, saying that no queen could ever rule over all stars. Reluctantly, Arisa agreed. She became the queen of a single star high up in the sky.

At night, when she looked out of the window she looked for this one star to guide her. Her gaze found it and then she understood that it was never a song of stars she heard, but only of a single star. Even the song was less than she thought: but a whisper in her ear, just a sparkle in the sky.

In a way silly girls get scared when their games become too intense, Arisa shrunk back and closed the curtains. She pulled up the bedcovers over her head, but it did not help. Arisa still heard the star beckon to her wordlessly. It was like a single note played on an instrument, a lone birdcall over a lake. 

It was only her that heard it. No one understood when she spoke of it. They could not understand the significance, the terror and the exaltation that came from it.

“Does it ask you to do something?” asked Melissa, after they finished swordsparring. She was older, almost a knight herself. 

“It does not speak like us. It just… calls.”

“Afraid you’ll get up one night and run off into the woods?”

Arisa was quiet for a while, stabbing the earth with her wooden practice sword.

“Maybe.”

“I can tie you up to your bed,” offered Melissa.

“Thank you, but that won’t…”

“I tied up my aunt when she started shaking! Doctor said I helped. I can do that again with you, I got practice.”

Arisa sullenly looked at Melissa and noticed the laughter wrinkles around Melissa’s eyes. Melissa was making fun of her. Arisa swung her sword at her and a tussle broke out.

That was it. The star could only call, but it depended on Arisa to follow. Arisa went to bed early and kept the thick curtains closed.

Time grew like a tree, losing leaves and gaining them year after year. Arisa became a young woman. She entered the society, ready to court and to be courted. Lady Arisa von Fellengard joined hunts, she danced at balls. 

She stayed up, longer than before. As she went home from festivities, she felt the chill of the night and heard the call of the dark star. In tents after hunts she could feel her heart beat in time with the pulsing of the star.

The star could do nothing to Arisa. The star was high above and it would merely shine as it did long before Arisa’s birth, as it would long after Arisa’s death.

Arisa wished she would howl at night, grow fur and run wild. She wished she would scratch her fair skin bloody, but she did nothing of sorts. Arisa merely waited for the sun to rise, ever so sensible. There were still no words for the ravenous desire, for the mindless horror that the night brought. There was no reason, no curse, no spell to be lifted. She asked priests, she searched the books, yet there was nothing but her and the unnamed dark star which held no meaning to anyone but her.

After another sleepless night, Arisa wrote a letter to her parents, packed her things and left her family home. She told to herself, she would be back. A month to clear her head. She just needed to run, to walk in any direction, just to get away. 

So lady Arisa von Fellengard stole a mare from her parents’ stables, hunted and fought, talked with villagers and merchants and walked dusty and overgrown roads. At night the dark star still shone, but Arisa thought: “Just another night and I will be somewhere else. Behind a mountain, in a deep, deep cave or in an inn filled with people. I will forget about the dark star, because I will not see it, I will not hear it and I will not feel it.”

Early at dawn she rose on the last day of the month and looked at the path which would lead her back home. Her stray gaze went up to the sky and there she saw it: the dark star blocking the way. She would never go back. She would never be able to explain why she needed to go, to run, to flee. Why she, the only heir of the Fellengard family, would give up her legacy, abandon her parents, forget about her responsibility.

Arisa thought of crying, but the tears remained just a thought. She knew even as a child that the dark star was hers just as much as she herself belonged to the dark star. Whether she stayed enthralled listening to its speechless song or ran from it or to it, it would remain her anchor and her bane and her blessing and everything she does will be because or despite of it.

Finally it broke something precious to Arisa, forcing her to cut the ties to her family. It showed the ugly truth that Arisa would rather never speak a word to her parents than to live in terror once more. She lost her friends, the comforts of her station and her dignity.

Finally she had a reason to hate the cursed star. Yet it was not hatred Arisa found in her heart. Like a flower unfolding its petals, the heart opened itself and sang back to the dark star. The song was a promise to deny it, a sweet song acknowledging the bond, the pledge to break the dark star as it broke Arisa herself, without ever touching it.


End file.
